


Sherlock and the Doctor

by jellybabys



Category: Doctor Who, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2017-12-15 22:04:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/854511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellybabys/pseuds/jellybabys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock and the Doctor separately set out to crack a case, with both coming to the conclusion that the other did it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Doctor First

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor receives a distress signal and takes Clara along to investigate the mysterious case.

The Doctor was standing as he always was, staring at the Tardis’ computer screen intently.

“So,” Clara asked, coming down the stairs. “Where are we off to next?”

The Doctor didn’t reply, but just continued looking at the screen.

“Doctor?”

Again, no reply.

“Doctor!” she said, louder this time, coming up behind him and tapping him on the back.

He jumped. “What? Yes, I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea,” he said, turning round.

“That’s not what I said, Doctor.”

“Oh? What did you say?”

“Where are we going next?”

The Doctor looked back at the screen. “2013 London.”

“Why? You’re not taking me home are you?” Clara asked, slightly worried at the Doctor’s mysterious silent mood.

“What? No! Of course not.” The Doctor gestured the screen. “See that flashing icon, that’s a distress signal from 12 o’clock on 10th December, London, 2013. We’re going to go to that spot at 11.55 and try to see what caused the distress signal, and then hopefully solve it.”

“Why don’t we just stop the distress signal from being sent in the first place?” asked Clara, looking at the screen.

“That would create a paradox. We would be answering a distress signal that hadn’t been sent. No, the best thing to do is see what caused it, and then deal with it.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?”

The Doctor grinned. “Let’s go.”  
He ran around the control panel, twisting dials, pulling levers and pressing buttons. Clara hung on as the Tardis started to move, watching, as ever, in awe as he always knew exactly which buttons to press. They didn’t always go where they were supposed to go, but he always made it look smooth. And it was always fun.

The Tardis landed with a jolt, and they both ran for the door. Poking her head out, Clara saw a street in most likely Central London. Looking around, it looked vaguely familiar.

“Hey, isn’t this a street near Downing Street?”

The Doctor, who had stepped out onto the pavement, turned back to look at her. “Yes, it is,” he said. “You been here before then?”

“No, but all the houses look the same. They all look partly similar to 10 Downing Street. Apart from the doors, obviously.”

The Doctor grinned at her, took his sonic screwdriver and started to scan the street. Clara closed the Tardis door and leaned back against it.

“Found anything?”

There was a slight pause as he finished scanning. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Just humans in the houses. Wait,” he said, as he ran across the street to one of the houses. Clara followed him. He was busy scanning a patch of white flowers with red thorns.

“What sort of flowers are they?” she asked.

“Strange ones,” the Doctor replied, mysteriously, and continued to scan.

Clara sighed, turned round and sat down on the little wall that surrounded the garden the flowers were in. Looking up the street, she saw a person walking towards them in the distance.

“Doctor? Look, someone’s coming.”

He looked up and saw the figure.

“Come on. Back into the Tardis, Clara,” he said, putting his sonic screwdriver back into his pocket and ushered Clara back across the street.

“What? Why?”

“I told you, we can’t interfere, we can only try and solve what happens after the distress signal is sent.” They had reached the Tardis now. Standing in the open doorway, they watched the person come down the street. He was wearing a long dark coat. Leaving Clara in the doorway, the Doctor ran back in to the Tardis.

“Come on,” he said, quietly, pressing a few buttons. “Who is he?”

Clara turned back to watch him, but he stopped her. “Keep an eye on that man.”

She turned back around. The man had reached the house with the strange flowers. She watched as her bent down as if to inspect the flowers. The flowers looked to be flinching away from the man. He reached down and touched one, then two of the flowers. Each one shivered, and to Clara, it looked like they were both now vibrating. 

The Doctor re-joined her at the door. “Any luck?” Clara asked.

“Apparently, that’s Sherlock Holmes,” he said.

“The consulting detective? Isn’t he a character from a book?”

“That’s what I thought. But I just did some quick research, and it turns out he’s a real person. And according to the Tardis’ new identity scanner, that’s him there,” he said, gesturing the man in the garden. “Also, the distress signal has just been sent out.”

“I think I know what sent it,” Clara said. “See those two flowers right on the edge that seem to be vibrating? He touched each of them, and they started doing that. I think they’re sending distress signals.”

The Doctor frowned. “That’s strange. The Tardis only picked up one signal.”

The man had been looking intently at the flowers throughout their conversation, but now he stood up, and turned slowly towards the two in the Tardis. The Doctor watched him, and he watched the Doctor. A sly grin broke out on the man in the garden’s face as he bent down without taking his eyes of the Doctor, and plucked one of the flowers from the garden.

There was a second pause, in which the Doctor managed to shove Clara back inside the Tardis and shut the door, before a massive explosion rocked even the Tardis.

“What was that?” Clara called to the Doctor from the floor.

“I don’t know,” he said, leaning against the door. “Shall we go and see?”

“Of course.”

Cautiously, the Doctor opened the Tardis door. Clara stood up and brushed herself down. Looking up, she could see that the street outside the door was covered in some sort of green gunge. The Doctor had knelt down and was scanning it with his sonic screwdriver.

“Is that goo?” she asked.

“No,” he replied, poking it. “It’s hard. It’s almost like paint.”

He stood up and walked out, with Clara right behind.

“By the way, as much as I appreciate you saving me from the explosion back there, I do not, however, appreciate being shoved onto the floor,” she said, as the Doctor continued to scan the street. 

He smiled. “Noted.”

“Look, those two flowers are still there,” she said, pointing at the now destroyed garden.

The Doctor ran over, and went to touch one. It leaned into his touch, and started vibrating louder. 

Clara joined him. “It sounds like it is humming.”

The Doctor nodded. “That’s the distress signal.” He went to touch the other flower, but it shrank away from his touch. “Curious,” he said.

Looking up, Clara saw a group of people in the distance coming towards them. “Doctor, people are coming. I think we should go.”

“Why?” he asked, looking up.

“They’ll find a way to link us to the explosion.”

The Doctor nodded. “Alright, let’s go. We’ll go somewhere quiet where we can actually listen to that distress signal,” he said as they walked towards the Tardis.

Just before she shut the door, Clara looked back at the two flowers and watched as the one the Doctor had touched withered away into the ground.


	2. Sherlock Arrives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock already suspects the Doctor is involved in this crime. John is dragged along to the crime scene.

Sherlock was lying on the sofa, his eyes closed and his hands resting gently under his chin as if in prayer when John walked in, carrying three bags of groceries. Deciding not to disturb Sherlock, he went into the kitchen to unpack the shopping. As usual, it was a tip. Shoving some of the stuff out of the way, he placed the bags on the counter. The sound wouldn’t disturb Sherlock, not when he was like this.

John opened the fridge, half expecting some part of someone’s body to be sitting there waiting for him, but there was only the minimal food they had. Frowning, John started to put some of the food he had brought into the fridge. He looked around as he did so, trying to find one of Sherlock’s many experiments that he played with when he was bored, but he couldn’t see any.

Suddenly it dawned on John. He must have a case. A pretty big one if the noise John had been making still hadn’t disturbed him.

Sherlock was still lying on the sofa as if he were in a coffin when John finally finished and sat down on his chair with the newspaper. However, only 30 seconds of the beautiful quiet had transpired before Sherlock leapt of the chair as if he had been shot.

“There’s only one explanation for it!” he exclaimed joyfully in John’s direction.

“What?” John asked, looking up from his paper.

Sherlock paused, probably just for dramatic effect. “Aliens.”

John looked at him incredulously before returning to his paper. “Sergeant Donovan will be so pleased.”

Sherlock looked at him, confused. “Why?”

“You’ve finally gone crazy. She’ll probably be the first to film you when you get carted off by the men in white coats.”

Sherlock frowned at him with the face of a child who dislikes being mocked. “But it’s the only explanation.”

“To what, Sherlock? Aliens can not be the cause for whatever case you're working on.”

Sherlock came over and sat in his chair. “You’ve heard of the time-travelling alien, the Doctor and his blue box?”

John glanced up but quickly returned to his paper. “He’s just a story. A bedtime story for kids. They like that sort of stuff. Hang on,” he said looking Sherlock in the eye. “You’re not actually suggesting he’s real, are you?”

“All stories have a basis for truth. But his stories are not just stories. I did some research years ago and found references to him throughout our history. There are pictures of cave drawings showing a blue box and a man standing outside it. There are carvings of the same blue box in the ancient tombs of Rome and in the Egyptian pyramids, always with a man. They’re not always the same man, but I think that’s how he lives so long. He changes his body somehow, when he’s on the edge of dying. He becomes a brand new person and so he can live for hundreds of years!”

Sherlock had got up and had started pacing excitedly throughout his speech. The force with which he was saying it made John want to believe him.

“They could be coincidences,” he suggested.

“Have I taught you nothing, John? There are no such things as coincidences. And even if there was, so many coincidences is just impossible.” He had stopped pacing now and was standing by the window staring out. “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. I have been eliminating the impossible all afternoon, and have come to the conclusion it must be aliens. And when there are aliens, the Doctor is usually involved somehow.”

John had given up on reading his paper, and sat instead watching Sherlock intently, listening to every word. “So we’ve established the Doctor is most likely real, and was involved, what do we do now?”

“We go to the crime scene,” Sherlock replied, already heading out the door.

“Wait, you still haven’t told me what the crime was.”

“Oh, there was an explosion near Downing Street.”

“What makes you think it was aliens?” John asked, shrugging on his coat.

“You’ll see,” was all he got in reply as they headed out of 221B Baker Street.

 

The taxi driver dropped them off just down the street from where the actual crime had taken place, so they walked the rest of the way. Even from a distance, John could see that the whole of the street seemed to be covered in what looked like spattered green paint. He could also see Lestrade with some other police officers standing around what probably used to be a garden. It didn't seem as though Donovan or Anderson were there though.

When they reached the edge of the green stuff, Sherlock bent down to examine it with his lens. “Oh why did they have to walk all over it,” he muttered to himself. He scraped a bit off and put in one of his clear bags he always seemed to have. Then ignoring his previous complaint, he walked over the paint and made his way over to Lestrade. John quickly followed.

“We think it was some kind of paint bomb,” Lestrade was telling Sherlock when John reached them. “Forensics are trying to analyse the green stuff.”

“Well I'm sure they'll do a wonderful job,” said Sherlock, sarcastically. “If it was a bomb, where did it go off?”

“Based on the pattern of the green spread, we think it came from this garden,” Lestrade said, gesturing. “We’re trying to establish the bomber’s footprints.”

“You’re going to have a hard time if your men keep trampling all over the evidence,” Sherlock said, looking over the garden. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing at a single white flower with red thorns.

“A flower,” Lestrade said.

“Yes I gathered that, I meant what kind of flower.”

“I don’t know. I’m not a gardener.”

Sherlock sat on the wall next to the flower and looked at it closely. “Why is it the only one there? John, come here.”

John walked over and leaned against the wall to look at the flower. “What’s special about it?”

“Two things. One: it’s the only one remaining from what was clearly a large flowerbed. And two: does it look to you as if it’s vibrating?”

“Oh yeah, it is. It sounds like it’s humming.”

“Yes, it does.” Sherlock took out his phone pressed a few buttons and held it up to the flower. After a few seconds, the flower suddenly withered away into the ground. Sherlock pressed another button on his phone and pocketed it. He then took out a pair of tweezers from his pocket and picked up a single thorn that was all that remained of the flower. He put that in another of his clear bags, and stood up from the wall.

“I’m confused,” said John. “You said I would be able to see that this was,” he hesitated as a police officer walked by then whispered, “Aliens.”

Sherlock frowned at him. “You can see it. But you don’t, as usual, observe.”

John sighed. “Fine, explain it for me.”

Gesturing around him, Sherlock asked, “What does this green stuff look like?”

John looked around. “Well, from a distance it looked like green paint, but up close it looks like some sort of goo.”

“But?”

John frowned. “But it’s hard. It looks soft, but,” he said, tapping his foot on the green stuff, “It’s hard.”

Sherlock nodded. “Also, there’s that flower.” He began searching something on his phone. “I know pretty much every single type of flower native to this country and it’s not one of them. And just by searching it’s description,” he said, as he pressed on final button on his phone and showed John the screen. “We can see that there are no flowers that match that description anywhere in the world. Now what do you think that means?”

“Ok fine, we’ve established this is aliens. Are you going to tell Lestrade?”

“They definitely wouldn’t believe me. No, this is a case we’re going to have to solve without the help of the police.”

John nodded. Lestrade and the other officers were still examining the green stuff around the garden.

“Now that’s interesting,” Sherlock said, striding purposefully across the street. John jogged after him. He could be hard to keep up with sometimes.

Sherlock was crouched examining a metre square area on the pavement opposite the garden that was completely untouched by the green stuff. John knelt down beside him.

“What do you think that was?” he asked.

Sherlock ignored him, but started muttering to himself. “The size is correct. Two pairs of footprints, a male’s and a female’s. That matches. Stride length and height, correct for the male’s. Unsure about the female’s. Everything seems to match up.”

John looked up back across the street. “Sherlock, Lestrade’s coming over.”

Sherlock looked up as well. “So he is.” They both stood up as Lestrade reached them.

“Well? Do you have any theories?” he asked.

“Yes, from what I can gather, some people, teenagers probably, set off a rather large green paint bomb from that garden. I don’t know why it was from that garden, for as far as I am aware, no teenagers actually live on this street,” said Sherlock. John watched him closely. It was often really hard to tell when he was lying.

“Well, who do we look for?” demanded Lestrade.

“Ask around for anyone who brought a rather large amount of green paint," he said with a smile.

“Is that it then?”

“One more thing. Other than the people in the houses, whom we can assume were not paying any attention to anything that happened outside, who was on the street at the time of the explosion?” asked Sherlock.

Lestrade gestured to a couple of guys sitting on a wall further up the street. “Those drunks up there said they saw everything, including apparently a blue box that appeared out of nowhere then disappeared. If anything else comes to light, let me know.”

Sherlock had already gone, leaving John to catch up and Lestrade, shaking his head, to get back to the useless investigation.

The two drunks were sitting on the wall in complete silence. They looked up as Sherlock approached them.

“Hello, apparently you saw what happened here. Care to tell me what you saw?” he said, politely. John was constantly amazed at how good an actor Sherlock could be when he put his mind to it.

“You’re not one of them police, are you?” one of them asked. “They don’t believe us.”

Sherlock gave them a smile. “No, we’re not. We just want to know what you saw.”

The other one looked up at Sherlock. “A blue box. Like one of those in those old movies. A police box I think it was. We was down one of them alleys down there and we heard this awful whirring noise.”

“So we looked out,” continued the first guy. “Onto the street, and the blue box had just appeared. We knew it wasn’t there 5 minutes ago. We didn’t know what to do, and the next thing we knew, two people got out. A man and a woman. The man held out some sort of electronic advice as if he was scanning.”

"Sonic screwdriver," Sherlock said.

The guy frowned at him. “Yeah, well, they went over to that garden, the one the police are so interested in now, and started looking at some flowers. We didn’t want to spy on them so we went back to sit in the alley. Next thing we know, we’re both lying on the ground after that explosion, and the whole street’s covered in that green stuff.”

“So we looked back out, and that man and woman was still in the garden looking at these two remaining flowers. People started coming down the street, so they ran back to their box.”

“We heard that awful noise again, and the box disappeared before our very eyes!”

Sherlock had been listening intently. “Thank you very much,” he said. “You’ve been most helpful.” With that he started walking back towards the main road.

“You don't believe them, do you?” John asked as they walked.

“Of course I do. Apart from their lack of correct grammar, they were very believable.”

“But you’re always saying how you should never twist the facts to suit the theories. It does seem a little like you only believe them because it proves your theory that the Doctor is involved.”

Sherlock turned his head and frowned at him. “I am not twisting any facts. Those guys were telling the truth.”

“Are you sure? Lestrade did say they were drunk,” John said, glancing back at the crime scene.

“He only said that because he needed a reason not to believe them.”

“How do you know they weren’t drunk? Why else would they be sitting in an alleyway?”

“They’re homeless, but they didn't recognise me so they're not part of my homeless network. And I know they weren't drunk as there was no alcohol on their breath.They were telling the truth, John. You had better believe it.”

John shook his head at the constant amazement he always felt around Sherlock as they reached the main street and Sherlock held out his arm to hail a taxi.


	3. Deeper Investigations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor looks deeper into the mysterious Sherlock Holmes.

The Doctor parked the Tardis in a lonely park under some trees in Central London.

“Why don’t we go farther away?” Clara had asked.

“It’s easier to stay near the crime scene,” the Doctor had replied.

Clara held on tightly as the Tardis made its usual jerky landing. And as usual, the Doctor was running around the console to the Tardis’ screen almost before the Tardis had fully stopped moving.

“Let’s hear that distress signal then,” he said, pressing some buttons.

“Did we record it?” asked Clara, coming over to the screen.

“Of course we did. She always knows exactly what we need,” he said, fondly tapping the console.

The Tardis beeped, and as the Doctor pressed a final button, the distress signal started playing.

“It’s just that humming. How are we supposed to know what it means?” Clara asked.

The Doctor frowned at the screen. “Maybe if we slow it down,” he said, turning a nearby dial.

The humming slowed down and eventually started to form words. However, it wasn’t very strong, and it some of the words seemed to be missing.

“Doctor! Help!” it said. “Sherlock… St Bart’s Hosp… Bomb…”

There was a few seconds pause before it started again. The Doctor pressed another button, cutting it off.

“St Bart’s Hosp? Is that a hospital somewhere?” Clara asked.

“Hang on,” the Doctor said, pressing a few more buttons and pulling a lever.

A map of Central London came up on the screen. “There,” exclaimed the Doctor, pointing at a flashing point on the map. “St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Commonly known as St Bart’s.”

“Is it linked to Sherlock Holmes in any way?”

“He apparently lives on Baker Street. The nearest hospital to him is only a street or two away and it’s not St Bart’s. So he can’t go there for medical reasons. People are more likely to go to the nearest. When I was trying to determine who he was, I did some research and it turns out he has some friends in St Bart’s, giving him access to the labs for research and analysis. I guess he doesn’t get that at the other hospital.”

Clara looked at the screen. “Where on this map is the street where the bomb went off?” she asked.

The Doctor frowned and pressed another button. Another icon flashed on the screen. “There,” he said. “South of Baker and Downing Street near the river.” 

“Which direction did he come along that street?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do we have any footage of him on that street?”

The Tardis beeped happily in answer, and a recording of the man walking up the street towards them.

“Which direction’s the river in on this footage?” asked the Doctor.

Another beep and the left half of the screen turned blue. “On the left,” said the Doctor. “He was walking up from the south. Now why would he be walking from there?”

Clara was watching the screen thoughtfully. “He’s not how I would have imagined Sherlock Holmes.”

The Doctor looked up at her. “What do you mean?”

Clara pointed at the screen. “That coat, yes. I always imagined him in a long coat. And also the hair seems to suit his character. But there’s something about his walk. He looks… unsteady. As if he’s unsure what he’s doing. I always thought he would be more confident in how he walked. You know, as if he knew exactly what he was doing.”

The Doctor frowned at the screen. “I suppose he does look a little uneasy. But my new identity scanner identified him as Sherlock Holmes.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing. I guess my imagination of him is different to the reality.”

The Doctor didn’t really hear her, but was busy typing more things into the computer.

“What you doing?” Clara asked.

“Trying to see if there’s any other connection between Sherlock Holmes and that hospital,” he said, still typing.

After a few seconds, he found something. “Look at that,” he said.

Clara looked at the screen. It was a heading from a newspaper saying, “Reichenbach Hero Commits Suicide.” “The Reichenbach Hero?” she asked. “What’s that?”

“The press gave Sherlock Holmes that nickname after he solved some crime to do with a painting of the Reichenbach Falls.”

“He committed suicide? Well how could that be him causing that explosion?”

The Doctor pointed to the date of the newspaper. “His ‘fall’ was almost 2 years ago. Since then it has apparently come to the light that the whole thing was staged so he would be off the grid for a while. But get this,” the Doctor said, scrolling down the newspaper page. “Look at the building he jumped off.”

Clara looked at the screen again. “St Bart’s Hospital. So there’s a deeper link.”

“Exactly. Witnesses said they had glanced at him on the roof about 10 minutes before he actually jumped. Something must have happened up there and now something else is going to happen.” He started running around the console pressing buttons again.

“What are you doing?” Clara asked.

“We have to get to that rooftop and find out what’s going on,” the Doctor said, pressing another button as the Tardis lurched into motion.

Clara hung on, wishing the Tardis wasn’t such a bumpy ride.

“I’ve had sled rides on no snow smoother than this,” she called to the Doctor.

“Hey!” the Doctor called back. “And you wonder why she doesn’t like you.”

“I blame the driver,” Clara muttered to herself, and the Tardis seemed to beep in agreement.


	4. Deeper Investigations Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock listens to the distress signal he obtained and waits for the Doctor.

Sherlock was sat staring into a microscope in the lab in St Bart’s Hospital when John came back with coffee for the two of them. Molly had been there, but she had left to do some work shortly after they had arrived. John often felt sorry for her, especially when Sherlock seemed not to realise she was there.

“I made you coffee,” John said, placing one cup on the counter by Sherlock.

“Yes, I can smell it,” Sherlock said without even looking up.

“I was just letting you know. We both know how absorbed in your work you can get,” John said, as he went to find a chair.

Sherlock glanced up took a sip of the coffee, smiled at the taste, and went back to the microscope.

John found a stool and pulled it up to where Sherlock’s laptop was placed with a media player up on the screen.

“What’s this?” he asked.

Sherlock glanced up again, and said, “I recorded the humming from the flower we found.” He nodded towards John. “Go ahead, play it.”

John pressed the play button. Humming filled the lab.

“So, what is it?” John asked.

Without looking from the microscope again, Sherlock said, “There’s a slider near the bottom of the screen that slows the recording down. Move it down to about 50%.”

John looked at the screen and pulled the slider down. The humming was gradually replaced with words.

“Sherlock!” it said. “The Doctor… Bart’s roof… bomb…” After a few seconds pause the words repeated.

John pressed the pause button. “Are you telling me a flower sent a distress signal?”

But Sherlock was muttering to himself. “It’s no use,” he exclaimed.

“What’s no use?” John asked.

Sherlock, using his tweezers, held up the red thorn that he had been looking at under the microscope. “This was all that was left of that vibrating flower. I have analysed it, and it’s definitely not from Earth. But I just don’t have the means to determine what planet it could be from!”

He put the thorn down again carefully and ran a hand through his hair. John looked back at the laptop screen. “So is the Doctor going to set off another of those bombs from the roof?”

“It would seem so,” Sherlock said, resting his chin on his hands. “But the likelihood is it’s going to be worse. He seems to be targeting me. Why would he be targeting me?”

John frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Why else would he go for St Bart’s? Anyone who reads newspapers knows that’s where I… You know.”

John winced. The topic of Sherlock’s fake death was still a sore spot between them. Each time it came up, John still felt the urge to punch him in the face.

“The Doctor doesn’t sound like a guy who keeps up with current affairs,” he said, deciding instead to sit on his hands.

“But if you were purposefully targeting someone, and you wanted to make an impression on them, you would research the best way to get their attention.” Sherlock noticed John sitting on his hands, but decided against saying anything.

John looked up towards the roof. “Shouldn’t we be up there in case he shows up?”

Sherlock nodded towards his laptop. “Close the media player.”

John turned around and pressed the little ‘x’ button at the top right of the screen. Another window that had been behind the previous one popped up, showing live footage of the roof.

“I set up a camera on the roof. If anything shows up, we’ll know. It also has sound, so if he turns up in the Tardis, we’ll be able to hear him.”

John looked at the footage. The roof was empty at the moment. But as he watched, a loud sound came out of the laptop, and the blue police box materialised on the screen.

“That’s our cue,” said Sherlock, jumping out of his seat. He took the thorn he had been analysing with him. He came over to John and shut the laptop. “Come on,” he said, almost running out of the door towards the stairs. 

John followed, slightly slower. He wasn’t sure if he really wanted to believe that the Doctor existed. It opened up so many possibilities. Like who else could be an alien if the Doctor looked so much like one of us?

Sherlock was waiting for him in front of the door to the roof. He held up a finger to his lips as John approached, then held up three fingers. Then two. Then one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the absolutely massive delay that has happened before posting any more chapters. My laptop's been broken for ages, and it turns out it's not "economically viable" to be repaired, so I'm gonna have to get a new laptop. Which will apparently also come with Windows 8, and while that seems exciting, my previous experiences on a friend's computer with Windows 8 didn't exactly go well so I'm not sure if I should be excited or dreading this new laptop... whenever I actually get round to getting one. I have written more chapters, but they are however, written hurriedly on my phone and I really need someone to read over them first. I don't really have anyone in mind for that, so feel free to get in touch if you wouldn't mind being my proof reader. Thanks! Again, sorry for delay in posting.


	5. The Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and the Doctor finally meet on the roof of Bart's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so so so so sorry for such a long delay! I thought I had some chapter's sorted, but they really didn't work, and I had to change them, then i had a bit of writer's block for it and then I had no time to write and yeah. Sorry.  
> Buuut, the good news is the next few chapters should be up a bit quicker. Hopefully. Enjoy!

The Doctor stood in the middle of the roof, holding out his screwdriver, scanning the area. Clara leaned against the door of the Tardis looking around thoughtfully.

“Why would this Sherlock guy bomb this place? I mean, I know jumping off a building doesn’t exactly leave behind good memories, but I think we can assume he jumped with the aim to actually survive all along. I mean, he _was_ a genius. So why would he bomb a hospital? You would have to be crazy to bomb a hospital,” she said, glancing over at the Doctor. She rolled her eyes when she realised he was clearly too absorbed on scanning the roof to listen. “Doctor,” she called to get his attention.

He silenced her with a wave of his hand, his gaze and his screwdriver focused on the door leading to the stairs. Clara’s gaze followed his to the door. “Is he here?” she whispered, edging closer to him as he edged towards the door.

She was answered by a crash as the door was flung open and two men rushed onto the roof. The first, taller man, stood in front of the Doctor, his eyes narrowed, roaming over both him and Clara. The shorter man stood a little behind the first, his eyes wide as they flicked between the Doctor and the Tardis.

The Doctor lowered his screwdriver, but didn’t put it back in his pocket. “Sherlock Holmes, I presume,” he said to the older man.

The man, Sherlock, barely reacted. “Doctor,” he said simply, his eyes still narrowed. Even if Clara hadn’t read some of the stories about him, she would still have called that look ‘deducing’.

But there was something… Different. He didn’t look like the man from the street. Same height, same hair, even same coat. But there was something different about his face. This man definitely had more define cheekbones. She turned to say something to the Doctor, but he was already speaking again.

“But who are you really? This,” he said, holding up the screwdriver, “Says you’re human. But that explosion was alien. Are you really human?”

Sherlock looked slightly taken aback, and a little confused. “Of course I’m human.”

“Then who are you working for?” the Doctor demanded.

The shorter man, ( _That must be John Watson_ Clara thought), frowned and stepped forward slightly. “Hang on. You think _he_ did it? But…” he trailed off at a warning look from Sherlock. To Clara, it looked like a look that said ‘Don’t say anything. Let me get to the bottom of this.’

“Of course we think he did it. There was a distress signal,” the Doctor said.

Sherlock’s head snapped up at that. “A distress signal? From a flower?” When the Doctor nodded, Clara could almost see Sherlock’s brain go into overdrive. “That’s why there was only one. That’s why it withered away when we listened. There were two, weren’t there? One for you, one for me. Oh this is brilliant. Someone’s setting us up against each other. But _why_?” He brought his hands to his lips, his eyes wondering everywhere, barely seeing anything, his brain still working.

The Doctor frowned. “What...”

Clara cut him off with a hand on his arm. “Doctor, that’s not the man from the street,” she said quietly.

He turned to her. “Of course he is. Look at the coat, and the hair. And the Tardis said so.”

Clara gave him a small smile and glanced back at the Tardis. “That identification thing in the Tardis is new, isn’t it?”

The Doctor hesitated. “Yes…”

Sherlock’s head snapped up. “The man on the street. You saw a man on the street who apparently caused the explosion, right?”

Clara nodded. “Yes, and he looked like you, even the Tardis thought he _was_ you, but turns out she made a glitch.”

Sherlock was thinking again. “How did he walk?” he demanded.

The Doctor frowned. “Walk?”

“Yes, describe how he walked.”

“How do you describe a walk?”

“Oh, never mind. Do you have a video of him?”

The Tardis made a few noises, and Clara’s phone beeped with an incoming text. She glanced at it, frowned at the Tardis and showed it to Sherlock. “She just sent me it.”

Sherlock watched the video of the man walking down the street towards the garden, which was then filled with the alien flowers. He watched him touch the two flowers and pluck a different one, causing the explosion. “Interesting,” he muttered.

“Well?” Clara demanded. “What did seeing his walk tell you?”

“Don’t you see it? He looks uncomfortable. Almost as if he isn’t sure how to walk. Like he isn’t used to that body. Look at how long and uneven his strides are. You can see that he’s used to a smaller body.” His eyes started flicking about as his mind searched for an answer. When it came he straightened a little. “Oh,” he said quietly. “That’s not good at all.”

“What is it?” John asked.

Sherlock turned to the Doctor. “Don’t you see, Doctor?”

“Not used to his body…” the Doctor murmured. He looked up at Sherlock. “You can’t possibly mean…”

“Oh but I do.”

“But he’s dead.”

“So was I.”

The Doctor frowned. “No, but he actually died. He didn’t regenerate. He refused.”

“There will be an explanation for this, but right now,” Sherlock said, looking around. “We have to get off this roof.”

The Doctor nodded, and grabbed Clara’s wrist to pull her back to the Tardis. “Woah. What are you doing?”

“We have to go. This roof could blow any second.”

“So there is a bomb?”

“Yes, but none of us set it.”

By the door leading to the stairs, Clara could see Sherlock trying get John inside. “You say this place is going to go up in smoke, but what about the people inside? We can’t leave them,” he was saying.

Sherlock sighed. “I think we can safely presume it’s only the roof he’s trying to blow up. He only wants to kill me and the Doctor. Blowing up the whole building would only attract attention. And he’s got our attention already.”

“But why does he want to kill you and him?”

Clara wriggled out of the Doctor’s grasp and stood just outside of the Tardis. “I’m with him. I want to know what’s going on.”

“Clara, we don’t have time for this right now,” the Doctor said.

“You said before that ‘he’ was dead. Who’s ‘he’?” John asked.

Sherlock glanced at the Doctor, who shook his head. “We’ll catch everyone up later. Just go,” Sherlock said, finally succeeding in pulling John through the door.

“Clara, come on. We’ll meet up with them later,” the Doctor said from inside the Tardis.

“Okay, okay,” she said, jumping inside and shutting the door.

The Doctor pressed some buttons, and a live feed of the roof came up on the screen. He pulled a lever and the Tardis lurched into motion, just as Clara saw an explosion destroy the roof on the screen.


	6. Finding the Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and John search for the Doctor. Well Sherlock does. John eats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? I told you it would be quick! Now this story's stopped being on hiatus, it's almost writing itself! Anyway, enjoy!

Sherlock and John had only gone a little way down the stairs when they felt the explosion. John would have fallen down the stairs if Sherlock hadn’t grabbed his arm to steady him.

“Thanks,” he said.

Sherlock nodded in response and turned to go back up the stairs to the roof, but John grabbed his coat. “Don’t, Sherlock. The person who set that bomb, whoever they are, might turn up.”

“I’m counting on it,” was all Sherlock said as he tried to pull away from John.

But John pulled him back. “We're not going anywhere near that roof until I know what we're getting into.”

Sherlock looked at him. “A soldier never knows what he’s getting into.”

“I find that being with you can be more dangerous than being in Afghanistan. Let’s just go back to Baker Street and find the Doctor,” John said, heading back down the stairs.

Sherlock followed. “Baker Street isn’t safe. He’s already targeted this place to get my attention. The next obvious place would be to target Baker Street.”

“Who’s targeting you, Sherlock?” John demanded, stopping at the bottom of the stairs to look at Sherlock.

“Hopefully, I don’t know. However that is unlikely,” Sherlock said, continuing past John down the stairs. “We need to find the Doctor,” he called back to John.

John hurried to catch up, shaking his head at Sherlock's vague response. “How are we supposed to find him?”

“He lives in a police box. Police boxes have phones, John,” Sherlock said, pulling out his phone to wave it at John.

“You have his number?”

“No, but I will.”

John shook his head as Sherlock began typing furiously on his phone. They had just reached the door leading to the street. They stood out on the street, John waiting for Sherlock to finish whatever he was doing on his phone so they would know where to go. Getting a little bored, John risked a chance and looked up at the roof of the building. He nudged Sherlock to get his attention.

“Sherlock, look.”

Sherlock looked at John, then up at the roof where John was looking. Sitting on the edge of the roof, his legs dangling over the edge, was a man. John couldn’t really tell, but it looked like he was grinning at them.

“He does look a little bit like me,” Sherlock said quietly.

“I don’t like it, Sherlock. Let’s get out of here,” John said, nudging Sherlock in a direction away from the hospital.

“But we don’t know where the Doctor is yet,” Sherlock complained.

“We can find him in a minute. Let’s just get away from whoever that is.”

Sherlock sighed and rolled his eyes, and went back to typing on his phone, letting John’s nudges lead him away.

John led them to a little café a couple of streets away from the hospital. “Come on, let’s get a bite to eat.”

“Not hungry,” came the distracted reply.

“Well, I’m going to eat. You can sit there and type away on your phone then,” John said, pushing Sherlock inside.

John sat Sherlock down at a table near the window and went up to the counter to order some food, hoping Sherlock wouldn’t decide to suddenly run off without John.

Luckily Sherlock was still there when John came back with his food, still on his phone. John sighed as he dug in. This felt like one of those times where Sherlock would suddenly run off, making John leave half his food behind.

He had barely started eating, when Sherlock exclaimed, “I’ve got it!”

John looked up. “How?”

“I searched for people who are rumoured to have some connection with the Doctor. There are quite a few. Especially on the internet. It was relatively easy to separate the liars from those who had honestly been in contact with the Doctor. Then I just had to pick the ones who were most likely to still have some sort of way to contact him. The most obvious was a group called Torchwood, and I emailed their head, but after some pretty flirty emails on his part, I finally established he didn’t actually have a failsafe way to contact the Doctor. So I tried some other people who had a likely connection with him. I eventually found a woman called Martha Jones. Well, Doctor Martha Jones,” Sherlock explained.

“Yeah, I heard of her,” John said. “Works for that military unit called, well, UNIT. Or something.” He glanced up at Sherlock and gestured with his fork. “Carry on.”

Sherlock was staring at John with a look of confusion, but it quickly passed. “Well, seems she was a companion to the Doctor for a while, and when she left, she gave him her phone, so she could ring it, and the Doctor would know it was her. And she gave me the number,” Sherlock said with a smile.

“You realise when you ring it, he’s going to think that it’s Martha,” John said.

“Yes, well, hopefully he’ll work it out,” Sherlock said with a small smile, and dialled the number in.


	7. Phone Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor gets a phone call

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, well, sorry (again) for the delay. I was ill for a few months before Christmas, then I went away, and I'm just trying to get back into writing, so this is just a short chapter to get me warmed up. Next chapter should be longer, and there definitely should be a shorter delay... Hopefully.  
> Enjoy!

The Doctor was pacing. He didn’t usually pace. Well not this much. And certainly not this quietly. He had barely said a word since they had just escaped the exploding roof.

Clara stood watching him, scared to say anything that might set him off in some way. Eventually she went to ind the kitchen and make some tea.

20 minutes later, when Clara came back, the Doctor had stopped pacing and was leaning on the console, staring off into space.

They both jumped when a phone rang.

The Doctor glanced at Clara, his eyes wide, before he set off, running around the console, looking for the phone. When he eventually found it, Clara saw it was a mobile phone.

“You have a mobile?” she asked.

“It’s not mine,” he said, staring at it for a few seconds before answering. “Martha?” He smiled when the reply came back, and pressed a button on the phone to put it on speaker throughout the control room. “Should have known you’d be able to track someone down.”

The voice that came back through the speakers was unmistakably Sherlock Holmes’. “Didn’t take too long. Had to go through a Captain Jack Harkness first. That was an interesting conversation. Anyway. We need to meet someplace safe and discuss options.”

“And explain what is going on,” Clara called out.

An exasperated sigh came through the phone. “Yes, yes, we’ll catch everyone up as well. First, we need a meeting place.”

“The safest place I know is the Tardis,” the Doctor said.

“Yes, but we need to know where it is before we can meet.”

“You mean you can’t deduce it?” came the muffled voice of John through the speakers.

“Yes, it would be far safer if I deduced the location of the Tardis, however it’s hard to predict the position of a box that can be anywhere in time and space. It’s a bit unpredictable.”

The Doctor chuckled. “Regents Park,” he said. “You should be able to see it.”

“Brilliant. We’ll be there in 10 minutes. Come on, John,” came the reply before the call ended.

The Doctor grinned as he closed the phone and left it on the console. “It’s been years since that phone rang.”

“Who’s Martha?”

The Doctor was quiet for a moment. “An old companion,” he said, idly pressing buttons on the console.

Clara watched him sadly. “What happened?”

“She went home. Left me the mobile so that if she rang, I would come help.”

Clara just watched him quietly. “You alright?”

“Of course,” he said, finally looking over at her.

Clara gave him a small smile. “So, what now?”

Doctor smiled back. “Now, we wait for the detective and his blogger to get here. Shouldn’t be long.”


End file.
